


❝ we will find you, acting on your best behaviour. ❞

by peachdelta



Category: The Protomen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 20:35:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17008758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachdelta/pseuds/peachdelta
Summary: Fear keeps her in line.Anger keeps her hopeful.She finally understands.





	❝ we will find you, acting on your best behaviour. ❞

There’s a man standing next to her at the crosswalk who’s smoking a cigarette. Her lungs are aching and she feels nauseous, but ignores it. It’s funny, she’s ‘gotten used to’ almost everything in this city, to the guards patrolling the streets, the way the air smells like metal and ash and blood, the terrified silence.

_ Keep quiet. _

Roll is her name-- or, at least, that’s what she’s fairly sure it is. Her father told her that the day he found her as a toddler, red-faced with hair sticking to her face and all over in blonde wisps, she’d tried to say her name but it came out as ‘Roll’. So here we are. Her hair is a dull blonde and her eyes are an equally dull blue, like an ocean before a storm. Everything in this city is a dull colour like it’s been washed out by the terror gripping it. By its death, by it’s hopelessness. There are some broken neon signs hanging off of buildings, flickering sadly, but even it’s colours are washed out by melancholy and memory. 

No memory.

Nobody knows how the world fell under darkness. At least, nobody who would do anything.

20 floors above the dark streets of the city, Roll Light lives in a run-down tenement with her father, Thomas Light. An eccentric and brilliant man, her father is a loner, a man of ideas, ideas forbidden in Wily’s society. Three years before Roll had even been born, Light had sought out a change, a way to free the people in this city, using a son he built with own hands to fight for humanity, a perfect man, an unbeatable machine, hellbent on destroying Wily and his army of robots. Ready, willing, prepared to fight.

It didn’t work.

He made another son in lieu.

Megaman was a good-natured boy who had brown hair and bright blue eyes. He looked like an 18-year-old boy. He’s looked that way all his life. Robots don’t age. 

He also knew everything, at least, when Roll was younger she thought he did. He’d help her with her math homework when her dad was too tired to, would make meals, would clean just to help his dad with his work, to make life easier for him. Despite that, Roll always saw a sadness in his eyes. Wonder, confusion, and despite how young she was during those moments, it always made her realize that he was just as young as she was. They were both changing as they learned.

But she’s not that young anymore. And she’s not that curious. Just cautious.

There are three schools in Monsteropolis-- a positively terrible public school, an all-boys private school, and an all-girls private school. Her father wasn’t exactly affluent, but he couldn’t homeschool her-- didn’t have the energy, was busy with whatever work he had, and Megaman didn’t know how to teach a child. But by some heavenly miracle, here Roll is, in her uniform, heading to school. It’s January, and occasional flurries spitting down snowflakes every so often, sticking in her hair. It reminds her that it’s real. That this is a real place on the earth.

She stares at a snowflake that had clung onto the sleeve of her jacket and watches it melt. The light changes and the small crowds gathering at the crosswalks cross the street in a silent exodus. She doesn’t make eye contact with the guard at the end of the street, knows not to.

Roll doesn’t know why they let her go to this school. Perhaps she was labeled ‘gifted’, although that brilliance is the sort of thing to get you killed, not accepted into a rich-person school. All she knows is that she’s grateful. The school, with its gray-and-white brick lined by a chain-link fence, is in front of her. Joyless.

“Roll.”

She thinks on this every day. Obviously, they knew who her father is, right? So why didn’t they just kick her out?

“Roll…”

Sometimes she worries that one day she’s gonna be held for ransom or something in exchange for Megaman and her dad dying or--

“Roll!” A thick accent interrupts her thoughts.

She jumps and looks off to the left. A tiny girl with emerald green eyes and short blonde hair is looking up at her. 

Kalinka Cossack. Several years ago, two minutes into her first day of seventh grade, Kalinka had marched right up to Roll and demanded they be friends. Kalinka is definitely a very sweet girl, but clearly sheltered by her obviously rich family. Roll had never met Kalinka’s family, and Kalinka had never met Roll’s. It was for the better.

“Hey!” Kalinka beams and Roll nods back. “I’m soooo tiiiired…” Kalinka yawns animatedly, waving a hand in front of her face.

Of course, she could afford to be animated. Of course, she could afford to be just the tiniest bit brighter because of her family. Not by much, of course, god forbid she cause a scene, but it made Roll’s heart ache the tiniest bit more.

The two walk into the school and Roll is immediately assaulted by the smell of cleaning fluid and wood. It’s a strange mix of smells, and buildings directly funded by Wily are all like this. Strangely clean, sterile, like if someone breathes they’ll get shot. Obvious, by the cameras that follow each and every student as they enter.

The school day is divided into blocks with a tiny number of students in each class. Math, science, English. No history. There’s an art club after school, but no one ever goes there. It’s an otherworldly place compared to the rest of the city, autonomous and uncaring, and yet Kalinka seem unbothered by it, making Roll wonder if that’s what the rest of Kalinka’s life is like.

Envy.

She sits outside on the steps two minutes after the bell has gone, knees pulled up to her chest as she watches her classmates leave the school grounds, all going different places, but for just a moment, as they walk down the steps, going the same way. It’s a strange unity, the only unity she sees that’s made by their own choice instead of being forced to by some stupid robots. Her chest heaves in a sigh.

“Why the long face?” Kalinka asks, planting herself right next to Roll on the steps. 

Roll just looks at her.

“I mean, other than…” Kalinka gestures vaguely. 

“It’s that,” Roll comments, and Kalinka’s shoulders slump.

“Do you wanna come to my place? We can hang out and watch TV and stuff.”

Roll starts. TV? The most they have back home is a radio, and yet Kalinka offers this so casually, so normally. Rich people are so fucking weird. 

“My dad’s gonna wonder where I went, though,” Roll says carefully, and Kalinka just pulls out… a fucking cell phone.

“Just call him!”

Roll blanks, and silently takes it. Okay, no getting out of this unless she wants to hurt Kalinka’s feelings, and she really doesn’t wanna do that. After a hushed conversation over the phone, her dad urging her to be careful, Roll hangs up, hands the phone back, and nods.

“My chauffeur--” (Roll nearly about has a heart attack,) “--will be here in two minutes. We just gotta wait!”

“I knew you were rich, but I didn’t know you were  _ that  _ rich,” Roll sighs, shaking her head, and Kalinka just looks at her in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Roll sighs, and a shiny black car rolls up to the curb. Kalinka grabs Roll’s hand and leads her down to the car. It occurs to Roll that she’s never actually been in a car before, mostly riding on the backs of motorcycles or just walking to the places she needed to go. She’s never been in a car this nice, at least. It smells new on the inside and it’s remarkably clean, she notes as she mimics Kalinka’s movements on pulling on her seatbelt. The chauffeur begins driving, and Roll stares out the window. It’s easy to pretend that everything’s slightly less bad than it is when it’s a blur through a pane of glass, isn’t it? 

It takes her about eight minutes to realize where they’re going, and when she does, she presses up against the back of the seat and nearly screams.

“What’s wrong? My dad lives here, so, I do too.” Kalinka tilts her head, and Roll lapses into terrified silence. Oh god, she’s gonna die. She’s so gonna die here, all because Kalinka thought it would be a good idea to bring her to the fucking  _ Wily tower  _ as if that would be a good idea! Roll starts silently praying to whatever god might be listening, although from the outside she’s just got wide eyes and is stiff as a board. Okay. Okay, this is happening. She’s going to die. Let’s just preemptively assume that, okay. OKAY.

The car pulls into mezzanine parking and stops, and Kalinka gets out. Roll is scared stiff.

“Hey, c'mon!” Kalinka waves her hands around, and Roll very slowly unclicks the seatbelt and gets out. Absolute fear. She’s so gonna die…

Kalinka leads her to an elevator, which is lined with mirrors and takes about two minutes for it to get to the floor Kalinka (apparently) lives on. Those two minutes has Roll standing there completely still, nervous that if she breathes wrong she’s gonna get shot in the head. Oh, god. Oh, goooooooddddd.

The hallway is clean and white and they pass by an open door, where Roll has to do a double take. It looks so  _ familiar,  _ the way there’s blueprints stamped to the wall, some of them overlapping each other, with papers haphazardly scattered across the floor with meager lighting and writing tools strewn across the desk, the smell of coffee and oil permeating out the door, and a haggard-looking man in a lab coat hunched over a desk. This is decidedly not her father, by his greying brown hair, but it still gives her whiplash. He turns to look, and she gets whiplash again-- he looks so much like Kalinka, in his eyes, his nose, and Roll realizes that, ah, this is her father. Dr. Cossack.

“Hi, dad!” Kalinka waves. “This is my friend, Roll! We’re gonna go watch TV in my room.” She beams, and Cossack nods at Roll silently before turning back to his work. Kalinka keeps walking, but Roll stands there, taken aback. In another world, this is her father. This is her father, worked to the bone by a man standing on his back, reaching up, using people like Cossack as a stepping stone to stand over the world and puppeteer it. In another world, Roll is beside him, disillusioned and cheery, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She wouldn’t’ve had to worry because her father would have taken the brunt of all of that terror into his hands and added it to the weight he had to bear.

She doesn’t envy Kalinka anymore.

“C’mon, slowpoke,” Kalinka urges, grabbing Roll’s arm and pulling her gently. Roll follows, slightly dazed, and they reach Kalinka’s bedroom. It’s cutesy, even for a teenage girl. It’s clean, and everything, from the walls to the plushies, doesn’t have a speck of dirt on it. There’s a large television screen on one side of the room.

It doesn’t look lived in. 

Kalinka plants herself on her bed and Roll awkwardly takes a seat next to her, nearly falling over into the sheets when it threatens to swallow her up. It’s so soft, it surprised her. She rights herself as Kalinka clicks the TV on, and leans up against the wall clutching a pillow as some ‘soap opera’ plays on it. Roll tries to pay attention, but she’s mostly struck by this room. It’s too clean. It reminds her of the school, despite the heavily differing colour schemes. The scent of cleaning fluid permeates the air, acrid and sour, and she can’t help but feel a little sick.

She’s so nervous.

Kalinka urges her to sit next to her, so she does, awkwardly planting herself in the mess of pillows on Kalinka’s bed, and after a few minutes, she eventually starts to relax, until she hears a muffled tone come from the other room, and heavy footsteps. She tries not to move. She’s good at not moving, at staying still when she thinks she’s going to die, but Kalinka  _ jumps  _ off her bed and bounds over to the door, peeking out through a crack in it.

“Ooh, he brought that cool robot again…” She rolls back and forth on her feet. “Maybe I could convince him to let him stay for a bit. I’ve done it before!”

“Him?” Roll echoes softly. “Your dad?”  
“Nope!”

Beat.

Recognition flickers in Roll’s eyes and she immediately stands up and almost starts crying when she peeks out the door beside Kalinka. Of course, of fucking course, across the hallway, speaking with every measure of condescension and haughtiness, chin raised to look down at the poor scientist from over his nose, is a wholly unremarkable-looking man who just so happened to have control of the entire city. Behind him, a robot in a red helmet and dirty-looking poncho.

Wily finishes talking and turns to look towards Kalinka’s room. His eyes land on Roll. She doesn’t breathe.

She can hear Cossack protesting weakly in the other room, and Wily turns back to him.

“I’ll talk to her, of course. Do you understand, Cossack?”

Depressed ‘yes’. Wily beams (Roll feels sick) and turns around again, walking towards the door. Roll almost takes a step back. The spot above her heart has folded up like a lawn chair, her hands are shaking. This is visceral fear running through her like a freight train. 

“Hello, Kalinka!” he says, and Kalinka herself even seems uncomfortable. “I trust you’ve been well.”

“... Yes.” Her tone has shifted. It’s a tone Roll recognizes. A tone she herself has used before to keep herself from getting shot.

“Your father’s been so tired lately. It’s depressing, isn’t it?” His eyes turn to look at Roll. “Who’s your friend?”

“Um, Roll. She’s from school.”

“Roll…” Wily rolls the name around in his mouth, and it makes her sick. She wants her name out of his vocabulary, doesn’t want him to utter it ever again. Doesn’t want him to utter anything ever again. She holds nothing but contempt for this man, nothing but  _ contempt _ .

“You look familiar, girl.” Of course, he would use the word  _ girl  _ to address her, despite her terror she can still think that bitterly. She tries not to breathe. Prays he doesn’t recognize her. 

He  _ hmms,  _ shaking his head. “I’m surely imagining it. Kalinka, I need you to come with me to talk with your father.”

Kalinka nods carefully and walks out of the room. Wily glances at the helmeted robot in the poncho and mutters  _ keep an eye on her,  _ and the helmeted robot enters the room, footfalls heavy as Kalinka disappears to go speak with her father with Wily.

It’s an awkward silence as Roll tries not to stare, but ends up staring regardless. It’s helmet is scuffed and weatherbeaten, and the same can be said for his poncho. It’s got an old but immaculately taken care of yellow scarf on, faded slightly from washing, and it’s a surprisingly personifying detail about it.

“You don’t need to stare,” he says suddenly, and Roll sputters, stiffening and backing up. 

“I wasn’t staring,” she insists, and immediately freezes again. Oh my god, she’s gonna be riddled with bullets in the next five seconds, she’s gonna die. “I’m sorry,” she says, voice dropping to a hoarse whisper as the robot looks at her. She can see a light through the helmet, of the face behind. His eyes are glowing cyan.

Her heart drops when she recognizes that hue.

There’s a long silence, and then he turns away to look at the door. Roll straightens her back and leans against the wall, rubbing the hem of her skirt between her thumb and forefinger anxiously. The air is stagnant, and that terrified tight feeling in her chest still hasn’t faded. But there’s a new feeling, replacing it. 

Her father had a melancholic look in his eyes the day he pulled Protoman’s blueprints off of the wall and slipped them into a folder to be forgotten, just like the man’s memory. But he had always left one picture up, in a photo frame that never got dusty, in his study. He never let Megaman into his study. Megaman is a curious, headstrong sort, and Roll always believed it to be best that Megaman never knew that Protoman existed, at least right now. She knew he’d need to find out sometime, but she didn’t want it to be soon. She didn’t want him to be struck with the grief of a brother he never had, and with his herculean might would go to strike down the world, but he himself would be stricken down in the process. Light would be a Prometheus, seconded in reverse, giving knowledge to his son but both her father and Roll herself knew that Megaman would surely, surely lose his life in the process.

Neither she nor her father wanted to lose Megaman. Roll, being too young to compare that loss with anything else, and Light, life already fraught with loss and despair that he kept locked away in his heart and never told anyone. He had only the energy to tell Roll the tale of the son he sent to death, and then Roll understood he couldn’t send another one to that same fate.

Maybe she was easily influenced. Maybe she just believed him because he took her in. But she doesn’t want to let go of her brother so he could avenge a brother neither of them had ever met.

And yet, here she is. 

“He misses you,” she says suddenly, and she can see his shoulders stiffen.

“... I don’t know what you’re talking about, human.” The ‘human’ is said with a slight bite to it. He sounds tired, full of contempt at everything.

Roll’s heart aches more.

“He misses you, so much. I can see it, all the time.”

Protoman says nothing. Roll continues.

“You don’t have to listen to-- to  _ that man _ , you could just--”

“I could just what?” he says, with a sudden furious sneer in his voice, whirling around, and Roll’s fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. She stays still. “Kill him? You know it’s not that simple. It’s never that simple.”

They stand there in silence for a moment.

“You’re so young,” he says, but there’s no contempt behind it. It’s more like surprised sadness. Like when he got a good look at her he realized that she had so much more heartbreak to endure in her life, if she didn’t die first. “You’re so young.”

Wily breaks the silence preceding his arrival, unaware of the conversation that had just occurred. The weight in the air lifts, replaced by a different but equally oppressive mood, and Kalinka looks the same as she did when she left. She goes into her room, and Protoman exits it.

“Did you talk to her?” Wily asks.

“No.”

Wily thinks on this for a moment, and decides to believe him. He leaves. 

Protoman’s gaze locks with Roll’s for a second. His eyes, through the visor, softens the tiniest bit. And then his face hardens, and he walks away like it had never happened. Roll watches the edge of his poncho disappear around the doorway, but before it can fully vanish, Kalinka shuts the door. 

“So, what did you think of that robot? He’s cool, but he’s so aloof and mysterious. It’s weird, right? He acts so much like a person, but then you’ve got that helmet, and that  _ gun  _ for an arm, and--” Kalinka pauses, looking at Roll.

Her eyes have welled up with tears.

“Are you alright?” Kalinka rushes over to comfort her, leading her to the bed and sitting her down on the edge of it. “What did he say to you? Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Roll says, and she’s surprised at how steady her voice is. “I just feel like I lost something that I never had.”

Kalinka blinks in confusion, and Roll wipes away her tears.

“I’m okay,” she sighs, and Kalinka nods.

“If you’re sure.”

She was so happy to have a brother, to have Megaman by her side, growing and changing and learning along with her. With the moments that ticked by on the clock she cared about her family more and more, until that love was a fierce burning ache that hurts her chest and threatens to spill over. She doesn’t want them to get hurt.

Protoman had been hurt long ago.

Most likely, more times than Roll could count.

And Roll could never, ever help him.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ “If these people…” _

_ It’s a fierce, burning ache. _

_ “... tell this story…” _

_ Her lungs are in agony from all the smoke. She can barely breathe. _

_ “... to their children…” _

_ She can’t look. Can’t look at Megaman’s face, so fraught with grief and horror at his own actions, can’t look at Protoman’s face, so pained and yet strangely calm and at peace with his fate, can’t look at her father’s face, so resigned and depressed, like he’d given up long ago. _

_ “... as they sleep…” _

_ She uses her palms to wipe her tears. They keep falling. _

_ “... maybe someday…” _

_ You’re so young, he’d told her. So young. So much heartbreak in your life is ahead of you. _

_ “... they’ll see a hero…” _

_ She can barely hear his words above the din. She needs to hear what he has to say. She needs to hear. _

_ “... is just a man…” _

_ She clamps her hand over her mouth to muffle her sobs. _

_ “... who knows he is free.” _

_ Perhaps her saving grace is the fact that after Protoman’s hand drops and he goes limp, Roll couldn’t take it anymore and had to run away. Perhaps the reason that either of them lived is that Light ran after her to make sure she didn’t throw herself in front of a robot’s rifle in her grief. _

_ Hatred, burning hatred, saved her life. Raging against the dying of his Light. She couldn’t scream, could only destroy. _

_ So she stayed angry. _

_ The crowd had seemed pleased. _

_ She finally understood. _

_ There are no heroes left in Man. _

  
  



End file.
